Chapter Thirty
Eden knew he was many things—some good, some less so—but one thing he’d never been was blind.
Now that he had a better understanding of sex, and of Tha?s, he could see his lover clearly. And he knew that when he’d tied her up she’d been pretending not to be pretending.
It was true that she let herself orgasm again, as she’d promised she would.
He felt the difference when her quim contracted tight around his cock as she peaked. He could see and feel the utterly erotic liquid she produced when he brought her particularly intense pleasure. But it did not escape him that she had not been fully there when this happened. Her eyes were blindfolded, her hands were bound, and her spirit was far away.
He didn’t confront her about it. He’d paid for her body, after all, not her soul. Their agreement was that she’d teach him how to bring a woman pleasure, and she had. He was not entitled to demand more of her if she didn’t wish to give it freely.
But it broke his heart.
She’d transformed him by teaching him to let sex carry him away. To let his body feed his soul. She was so generous and giving as a lover, so perceptive as a teacher, so sensitive to his needs and wants and fears, for all her raucous bluster. She gave so much of herself. To think that she did not let herself receive pleasure and care in kind—and that, worse, she worked so hard to perform as though she did—made him ache for her.
She said she liked her work, and part of him believed her. But the fact that her physical enjoyment was a pretense made him realize there was something personal she was protecting.
Of course, her caution made sense. They’d part in less than a week. If he were wiser, he might be more cautious in pouring his feelings into their coupling, knowing that it—she—would be a memory.
But her distance pained him. He wanted her to lose herself not just in pleasure and desire but in the deep connection that he felt with her.
He wanted to make love to the woman who had remembered his birthday and made him a terrible cake. To the one who’d reminded him what a real hug felt like. To the one who cursed at roosters and cooed at turtles and wrote in pictograms and bribed dressmakers to help her friends.
He opened his eyes and reached for her and found her body hot to the touch.
“Tha?s?” he said, pressing the back of his hand to her forehead. She was dewy with sweat, but she shivered. She opened her eyes, and their usual vivid green was dull.
“Darling, do you feel ill?”
“I’m so cold,” she murmured. “It hurts.”
He pulled her close to him and wrapped his body around hers, rubbing her skin gently with his hands. She shivered again—her teeth were chattering—and he damned himself for not seeing the signs of this last night when she’d seemed flushed.
This was his fault. He shouldn’t have made love to her outside in the rain.
He would make her tea and broth. And then he would have Hattie send for a physician. But first he must move Tha?s to her own bed. The thought made him feel a bit bereft. She had not slept there since before Elinor had visited.
He helped her put on her least revealing dressing gown, which she did sluggishly, fumbling to get her arms inside the sleeves. “Can you walk?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said faintly. But when she stood, she instantly sat back down on the side of the bed, looking like she might collapse.
“I’ll carry you,” he said. He picked her up as he might a baby and found his throat catch at the weight of her, snuggled in his arms. He carefully walked her across the hall and tucked her into bed.
“Try to sleep,” he said. “I’ll bring you tea.”
She closed her eyes, mumbling something, and fell instantly to sleep.
Downstairs, he set about boiling the kettle, then gathered some vegetables—onions and celery and a carrot—from the pantry. He was going to make Tha?s the chicken broth his mother had made him as a boy and he in turn had made for Anna when she’d been ill as a child. It was not a cure for fever, but sipping it seemed to help fortify the sick, even if it was only as a comfort.
When Hattie arrived he sent her immediately to town to summon the village doctor, then went up to Tha?s carrying tea with extra honey, in case her throat was sore.
He sat on the edge of the bed and helped her to sit up.
“Drink some of this,” he said, putting the teacup to her lips.
Obediently, she took a few sips, then shivered and sank back into the pillows.
Poor thing. She was so wan that she seemed almost like a different person. Even her freckles were pale. He bent down and kissed her forehead.
“Can I bring you anything?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I’m just going to...” but she’d already closed her eyes.
He went downstairs to check on his broth, which was simmering on the stove. He stirred it a bit, then realized he had nothing to do except worry about Tha?s. He occupied himself pacing about the garden until the doctor and Hattie arrived.
“Your sister is ill, I’m told,” the physician, Dr. Burwell, said.
“Yes. She woke up with a fever.”
“Symptoms?”
“She said her body aches.”
“How long has she felt this way?”
“She seemed well last night.”
He desperately hoped that he had not contributed to her illness by fucking her three times the previous day. Oh God, what if his greediness, his constant need for her, had so exhausted her that she’d fallen ill?
He’d have to take more care. The way the days were ticking by so quickly was making him frantic with desire for her. Not just for her body, but to be near her, talk to her, spend time with her. Absorb as much of her as he could before he had to part from her.
“May I examine your sister?” the doctor said.
“Of course. Follow me.”
He led the man upstairs. In her sleep, Tha?s had pushed the covers off, revealing her rather scanty nightdress, which was tangled about her hips.
The sight was so pitiful, and she was so dear to him, that it was Eden’s impulse to rush up and fix her garments to restore her modesty. He nearly did so, until the doctor cleared his throat and Eden realized that, as her ostensible brother, he should turn around.
He also realized that the doctor might wonder why a supposed governess possessed such revealing garments, let alone wore them when she was ill. He hoped the man would be discreet, whatever the conclusions he might draw.
“I’ll just be outside,” Eden said.
He stood near the open door, not peering in, but not wanting to leave Tha?s alone with a strange man. He could hear the doctor asking quiet questions, and Tha?s mumbling weak answers.
He couldn’t make out the accent she was using. He doubted she had the wherewithal to put on an educated diction when she was barely lucid.
The doctor came out into the hall. If he had suspicions about who Tha?s was to Eden, he didn’t voice them.
“I’ll have to leech her,” he said.
Eden winced. He hated this practice, how it left the ill even weaker than they had been.
“Should we perhaps wait and see if the symptoms lessen on their own?”
The doctor scowled at him. “I think not. She’s very feverish.”
Eden relented. He puttered nervously outside the door while the doctor went back in, and waited in the hallway until he reemerged.
“Let her sleep,” Burwell said. “I’ll return tomorrow.”
“Thank you.”
Eden excused Hattie with the doctor and went inside. The cottage was fragrant with the scent of simmering broth. He hoped it would make Tha?s feel better.
He went upstairs to check on her and found her sleeping, pale as the sheets, with a sheen of sweat over her face. He dipped a cloth in cool water and dabbed it to her brow.
Her eyes fluttered open.
“Alastair,” she whispered.
“Don’t talk,” he murmured. “Save your strength.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “We don’t have much time, and I’m—”
“Darling, no,” he said. “That’s not important. All I care about is you.”
He spent the day taking care of her. He made her sip liquids every few hours, helped her to the necessary, and stroked her hair to soothe her back to sleep.
He tried to turn his attention to his long-neglected correspondence, but it made him nervous to be so far from Tha?s, where he couldn’t hear her if she called for him. And it felt like too abrupt a return to the real world he so wished he could avoid for a while longer. He savored the idyll he had here with Tha?s. He hated how soon they’d have to leave it.
For two days, he sat in a chair beside her bed and read a book, making it his only purpose to care for her. He made a pallet on the floor and slept beside her, so he would hear her in the night if she needed him.
On the third day of her illness, to his immense relief, her fever ebbed a bit. She was still warm to the touch but not burning as she had been, and she was able to remain awake for short stretches, with no delirium.
When the doctor arrived he pronounced her on the path to recovery and did not let her blood. “Summon me if she gets worse,” he said. “For now, continue to feed her broth, and see that she rests.”
“I don’t like that man,” Tha?s said faintly when the doctor left.
“Neither do I,” Eden said, thinking of how frighteningly wan Tha?s had looked after the leeches.
She shivered. “I’m so cold,” she said in a small voice, more to herself than to him.
“I’ll get you another blanket.”
He fetched the quilt off his own bed and spread it over her, tucking it carefully around her all the way up to her neck.
“Is that any better?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Maybe if you got in with me? You’re so nice and warm.”
He would not deny her any small succor he could offer. And in truth, he missed the feeling of her tucked up beside him. He wanted to cuddle her in his arms.
But it would not do to climb into bed in his clothes. He stripped to all but his lawn shirt and smalls and slid under the many blankets. Tha?s instantly melted into him. It was like being surrounded by flasks of hot water.
She shuddered in his arms.
“Poor girl,” he murmured.
“Will I get you sick?”
“I could not care less.”
She drifted off to sleep. Lulled by her heat and her heartbeat, he closed his eyes as well.
He awoke to the feeling of soft fingers on his lips. He opened his eyes, and Tha?s was staring at him, flushed with fever, her face full of affection.
“You’re so handsome,” she said, moving her fingers down to stroke his chin. “Like a prince.”
“Just a lowly earl, I’m afraid.”
“That will do.”
“You are as pretty as a princess.”
“Just a whore, I’m afraid.”
“You are so much more than that,” he said.
“No harm in whoring,” she said faintly.
“Of course not,” he said.
“And I’m so good at it,” she said, closing her eyes.
He kissed her eyelids. “That you are. You’re also burning up. Let me get you some tea.”
She put a hand to his chest. “No. Not yet. Stay with me.”
He held her for a while, until she drifted back to sleep. Then he went downstairs to gather tea and broth for her. He decided to give her a little bread as well, in case she was up to eating solid food.
She was whimpering in her sleep when he returned, so he woke her up.
“There, there,” he said. “Have a little to drink, and then you can rest.”
“I dreamed I had a baby,” she said. “It was sad.”
“You don’t like babies?”
“I love babies,” she whispered, like she was telling him a secret. “More than anything.”
He had the sensation of learning something that should have been surprising but did not startle him at all. The idea of her as a mother seemed oddly right. She could be so soft and nurturing and understanding, beneath her bawdy bluster.
“Then what was sad about the dream?” he asked her.
“I want a family,” she said softly. “You’re lucky that you’ll have one soon. A wife and sweet children. I want that more than anything. A little family of my own.”
His throat clutched. He thought of himself and Tha?s with a tiny infant tucked between them in this bed, cooing. Nursing at her breast. Soothing the squirming little precious creature as Tha?s looked on, eyes brimming with love for both of them.
He didn’t know what to say to her. Of course she could have children if she desired. Plenty of men had families with their mistresses, and some men married former courtesans, though none of his class.
But he did not want to think of her with another man.
“I think you’d be a wonderful mama,” he said, honestly.
She laughed ruefully. “You don’t have to tell me lies. But it’s kind that you do. You’ll be a perfect husband. You could send me home today, if you like.”
“I don’t want to send you home,” he said. “I treasure our remaining days together. And there are still things you can teach me.”
“Like what?”
“Like how to care for the person you...” It was on his lips to say the person you love but he trailed off just in time. For of course he could not imply he loved Tha?s. It wasn’t true. It could never be true, in this world where he was who he was, and she was who she was.
“How to care for one’s wife,” he said instead.
“You are very good at caring for all things, milord. Even your famous sheep. You don’t need me to teach you that.”
“Well, I like to practice on you,” he said.
He brushed a kiss over her damp brow, and wished it wasn’t practice.